Sense of place vital to livable cities

Book examines how urban design reflects who we are

Friedman suggests fewer Facebook friends and more face-to-face engagement with neighbours at local playgrounds would create better lives.

Photograph by: John Lucas
, Postmedia News

If you are looking for a good book to read this month, consider picking up a copy of Avi Friedman's A Place in Mind: The Search for Authenticity.

A McGill University architecture professor, Friedman wrote the book after visiting places around the world.

It's about place-making -how everything from culture to technology has shaped the sense of place of different areas.

Divided into 16 essays, the author takes us from Istanbul to Igaluit and talks about everything from the importance of playgrounds to hugging strangers in public.

In Teatime in Istanbul, the author's walk takes him to a tea house in the historic Turkish city which is surrounded by "markings" of its sense of place -tiles handcrafted by local artisans, with traditional motifs similar to those in Middle Eastern rugs.

He details how cultural insignia is critical to expressing the authenticity of a place, which leads him to ponder the difference between Middle Eastern and Western attitudes to space.

An example is the North American need for instant gratification, which results in our "architecture of the immediate," says Friedman.

Edifices are designed and built to wow and impress only for a limited time until the next trend comes along.

Friedman discusses how construction, technology and materials have allowed for larger and larger buildings, affecting place-making -which instead often needs to be intimate and human in scale.

And in today's digital age of architecture, there is no context of location. You can build any style of building anywhere in the world.

No longer is it mandatory to fit the architecture within the existing context using markings of local culture, materials, artisans and living norms.

Similar buildings are found in Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Paris, Bilbao and Prague.

- Lesson learned: Place-making is about patience -letting buildings and spaces age gracefully using local materials and cultural motifs.

In the Crowding in Hong Kong essay, Friedman wanders down Nathan Lane Road on the Kowloon Peninsula, wondering if it was a festival night given the sidewalks were jammed with people.

But he quickly realized this is everyday Hong Kong, or any other city with high-density housing. This leads to a brief history of how cities have evolved.

Originally, only the rich could live in the suburbs because they were the only ones who could afford the expensive and limited railway service to the city centre. Early suburbs were the new domestic ideal, with carefully landscaped outdoor spaces like those of country homes in Europe.

Friedman looks at Savannah, Ga., in the U.S. as a model North American city due to its density without highrises. He talks of how its buildings have been modified over the years, but they still remain human in scale and therefore more attractive to pedestrians.

- Lesson learned: Density, if done correctly, can be attractive and very livable -although Friedman doubts people will be willing to give up the big backyard, garage, driveway and wide roads of modern suburbia.

In the Swings in Petach Tikva essay, Friedman wandered in the community in Israel where he grew up.

As he reflected on his childhood, he realized that many of his memories were associated with playing outdoors.

He looks at the evolution of the informal, unorganized playing of children outdoors -with the eventual creation of specific areas such as playgrounds -into today's formally organized activities, where play and competing are regulated by adults.

He questions how this affects a sense of place that once encouraged socialization, community and engagement.

This has led to the modern afflictions of obesity, depression and sense of isolation -three unintended outcomes of our increasingly solitary, sedentary and indoor lifestyle.

- Lesson learned: We should foster more creativity in playground design by having design competitions that engage the artistic community.

Friedman suggests fewer Facebook friends and more face-to-face engagement with neighbours at local playgrounds would create better lives.

In The Winds of Fargo essay, Friedman examines how First Nation peoples originally adapted to living in the harsh winters of the prairies.

For example, some aboriginal peoples learned to build homes on south-facing cliffs or slopes to take advantage of solar heat in winter, while others built partly underground, using the earth as insulation for heating or cooling.

Friedman cites examples of how cities could better design buildings, streets and plazas to reduce wind and maximize sun. Such lessons were ignored by the first white settlers.

Friedman touches on how cities like Calgary and Minneapolis have created skywalks to avoid nature.

- Lesson learned: Rather than combating nature, we should be accommodating it. We should not be imposing a new urban order on the landscape that has an unsustainable future.

In the London's Humility essay, Friedman walks around the Kensington district of the British capital after a rain. He observes how everything seemed to fit nicely together -the low-rise buildings, the townhouses, the shops, the cast-iron fences, and the public and private domains.

He ponders what made it a pleasant and complete urban scene.

This leads to a layman's review of the history of urban planning and role of architectural codes in creating a sense of place.

In today's urban design, Friedman says there is too much of a vulgar show-off attitude manifested in multiple height buildings with odd shaped roofs and a plethora of exterior materials.

This eventually leads to his thesis statement: "A sense of place is created when there is a self-imposed discipline, exercised over a prolong period of time -centuries, perhaps.

"Beautiful places are born when property owners, designers and land developers adhere to consistent, if hidden, esthetic standards, a shared value system, foresight and yes, a dose of humility."

- Lesson learned: In today's placemaking, there is too much focus on individuality and not enough on humility and harmony with nature and neighbours.

Conclusion

For me, too much of Friedman's book was about how good place-making was in centuries-old cities created in a different time.

In the past, these changes happened over centuries; today, major changes can take place within a single decade.

While Friedman gives us a history of place-making, he has not identified what is new. It would have been interesting to look at contemporary placemaking and what is working, along with what isn't.

For example, dog parks reflect the fact that dogs are the new children of the young professionals and grandchildren of empty nesters.

Although they were created as places to walk dogs, they are quickly becoming multi-generational places for socialization.

Another thing to consider is that although recreation and play has become more formalized, the trend has lead to the creation of a new place-maker -the recreation and soccer centre as well as arena -which has, contem place-m visit the for Pub website pps.org for many people, replaced the church, plaza and museum.

Too often we are blinded by the past to see that we are experimenting with creating a new sense of place based on new values and attitudes.

Never before in the history of man have we been so obsessed with personal and food safety, cleanliness, privacy and health as North Americans are today.

Calgary has some of the highest food safety standards in the world. As a result, we have fewer street vendors, which are a major part of city life elsewhere in the world.

Another trend of huge importance in modern cities is the way personal automobile shapes modern urban design. Calgarians love their cars because they feel safer in them than on the bus and waiting at LRT Stations.

We are in the middle of a huge human urban living experiment.

Our experiments have not had the benefit of time to allow for adaptations, corrections and for the urban patina to manifest itself, like those cities in Europe that are centuries old.

Perhaps Friedman will pen a sequel.

Richard White has written on art, architecture and urban culture for more than 20 years. He is Director of Strategic Initiatives at Riddell Kurczaba Architecture. E-mail him at richardw@riddell.ca. Folllow him on Twitter at twitter.com/everydaytourist

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